Categories
Beer styles Generalisations about beer culture

What beer meant, what beer means

A glass of Pilsner beer in Wuerzburg, Germany.

A question from the Beerprole about what is and isn’t entitled to call itself ‘lager’ recently surfaced  on Twitter, before once again disappearing beneath the tide of the timeline. This reminded us of a similar discussion we’d had a few weeks before with about the term ‘mild’. UPDATE FOR CLARITY: In both cases, the question was a variation on “can beer X really be called a lager/mild”.

What confuses these and many other conversations is the co-existence of several meanings, each of which is equally correct, depending on context.

Historical (19th c.) Common understanding (what it’s come to mean)
US homebrew judging guidance
Mild Any young beer (not aged) — could be strong, could be hoppy; not necessarily dark. Weak, dark, not bitter. Weak, dark, restrained hopping, top-fermented (“ale”).
Lager From the German “to store” — cold conditioned beer. Yellow, highly carbonated, cold — “refreshing”. Made with bottom-fermenting yeast.

Anyone attempting to sell a beer which is perfectly correctly described as lager or mild in historical or technical terms, but which confounds people’s expectations based on common modern usage, is setting up their customers to be disappointed.

Unless, that is, they take care to explain all of that in the labelling or through educated bar staff, when the difference from the common understanding might become an intriguing selling point.

Categories
beer in fiction / tv opinion

Beer: a flash in the pan?

On our recent trip to London, we found ourselves pondering the sustainability of the current craze for craft beer.

At the Southampton Arms, as befits our great age, we sat in the corner saying things like “What does he think his hair looks like?”; “Eee, she’ll catch her death in them trousers — they don’t reach her ankles!”; and “Is that lad wearing leggings and cowboy boots?” The crowd was young and fashionable and, for the most part, drinking cask ale from dimple mugs.

We have a suspicion that, in two years time, when beer has had its moment in the spotlight and, say, the eighties wine bar has made a retro comeback, or everyone’s drinking Sahti, or whatever, some of these people will deny ever having touched a pint of ale. Maybe they’ll secretly admit they didn’t like it at all and only did so to look cool.

Even if we are witnessing a mere trend, however, it will be impossible to put beer back in its box. After all, wine didn’t disappear from the collective consciousness when the Dagmar burned down. The heady euphoria of ten new breweries a week and can’t go on forever, but Britain’s beer landscape will have changed for good by the time the fad passes. A hidden demand for good beer will have been flushed out and many will have become (to some extent) beer geeks for life.

It’s hard to have a fling with beer: to know it is to love it.

Categories
Beer history beer in fiction / tv

Work in progress: Pubs on Film

We’ve just started a new page on the blog where we intend to catalogue examples of pubs on film.

If you’ve got any suggestions, let us know in the comments on that page, or on this post, or by email, or carrier pigeon, or whatever.

Categories
Beer history Beer styles london

Horselydown Denied

Anchor Brewery building, Southwark

As Des de Moor points out, beer geeks got very excited last year when news broke that Wells and Young’s were to start brewing Courage Imperial Russian Stout again.

We’re still sulking that the first brew disappeared to the states, except for a few bottles sent to beer writers and industry types.

What we find particularly frustrating, however, is that it’s possible to disembark from a boat on the south bank of the Thames not far from the building which still bears the words ANCHOR BREWHOUSE HORSELYDOWN; to walk past the site of the old Barclay Perkins brewery; and to a Young’s Pub with a view of St Paul’s Cathedral, without finding one drop of IRS.

London is simultaneously spoiled for beer, and oddly neglected — out-of-the-way locations are increasingly stuffed with craft beer bars while more traditional breweries use their flagship locations to sell burgers and Peroni.

If you want to drink a historic interpretation of imperial stout in Southwark, Harvey’s at the Royal Oak is your best bet. Plenty of other British brewers are also selling bottled beers inspired by Courage IRS, including the Old Dairy Brewery whose Tsar Top is based directly on a historic recipe.

Categories
marketing opinion

Marketing: the work of the devil?

According to some people, there are two big reasons for crappy industrial beer: bloody accountants and bloody marketing people.

Now, there are some things for which brewery marketing departments might deserve the blame: packaging that damages the product, both literally and in terms of its reputation; empty blandishments — “finest malt and hops”; “premium world lager”; “only four ingredients“; and gimmicky “innovations” forced upon sometimes unwilling brewers.

But can’t marketing, at it’s best, be a bridge between the specialised world of the brewer or beer geek and that of the as-yet unconverted? Like a kind of translator, perhaps.

“Naff marketing terms” might wind-up seasoned beer geeks but they can engage people’s interest in a product they might otherwise never notice or, worse, entirely dismiss. (And they do gain charm with the patina of age…)

Is the best marketing, in fact, a form of beervangelism?